Vocabulary and Memory

Haiku Deck

You can say you know a word when  you can retrieve it with ease in the right context and use it in a grammatically correct way.

Noticing the word and spending time with it by looking up its definition, learning about its family and collocates, and thinking about it will give the word a home in your lexicon, or vocabulary database. After wards, the more time you visit the word by retrieving it the more familiar the path to your word's  home will be.



Recognition is one of the initial stages of the learning process. For reading, recognizing a word  may be enough to get you through the text.When you recognize a word you are retrieving it from your memory. The more frequently you retrieve the word from your memory the faster you'll remember the word and the sooner you'll be able to produce it in writing or speaking.
At the beginning you'll need more context clues and hints to remember the word, but eventually you will need fewer and fewer clues and hints. When you can remember the meaning of a word without any help, you'll also be able  to recall the word and use it in a sentence or in conversation. The more you use it in conversation and writing, the more automatic your recall of this word will be. In the end you won't even have to think about the word. You'll use it without thinking.

The slides in Haiku Deck are just one way to help you recall the words we learned in class.